


Five Times He Did, One Time He Didn't

by cytheriafalas



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-17
Updated: 2013-06-17
Packaged: 2017-12-15 07:32:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/846937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cytheriafalas/pseuds/cytheriafalas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For a prompt on the zombies, run kink meme. "Five times Jack saved Eugene's life and one time he didn't." I meant for this to be like a couple paragraphs for each of the times, maybe five pages. It... ended up not that. I was going to end this differently, but then I couldn't bear to, so I changed it. Also, I'm only midway through season one, so there's really no spoilers for anything.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times He Did, One Time He Didn't

The first time Jack saved Eugene's life, they were making their way cross-country, still horrified by what was going on around them. They weren’t yet inured to the devastation, the dead bodies that climbed back to their feet and tried to eat them.  
  
They still were new at this surviving thing. Everyone was. Their survival skills were rudimentary, at best. They knew wet clothes were bad for you, they knew wet shoes could hurt your feet. They didn't realize that damp clothing, even from yesterday's rain, could make you susceptible to hypothermia. Hypothermia happened when you fell in a lake in the middle of winter, not when yesterday's damp seeped through one of your supposedly waterproof bags.  
  
He didn't recognize the symptoms at first. Eugene was cold. They were always cold. But then Eugene couldn't stop shivering, even when the breeze stopped and the sun shone. It was autumn, and still quite chilly, but warm enough that they should have been fine, especially with Jack handing over every spare piece of clothing he had. Eugene was clumsy. Sometimes Eugene was terribly clumsy, tripping over the one fist-sized rock within shouting distance, but it was when his own feet became as foreign to him as a tree that Jack began to suspect something was wrong.  
  
"J-Jac-k?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"I-I'm sotired."  
  
Jack glanced around. It seemed safe enough. They hadn't seen or heard any zombies in days. "There's a shack up ahead, 'Gene. Think you can make it? Wait, what are you doing?"  
  
Eugene was tugging at the outer jacket, trying to unzip it with shaking fingers. "I'm too hot."  
  
"Hot? Eugene, it's not... Leave that on." Jack grabbed his hands, holding them tight. "Look at me."  
  
He looked upwards, but his gaze was unfocused, confused.  
  
"Shit." It was possibly not the most helpful thing for him to say in that moment, but something was very wrong. "Leave that on and keep walking with me."  
  
The shack was, mercifully, empty. A single room with a single entrance, easy enough to barricade. Not the ideal shelter, but night was approaching and he didn't think Eugene could make it much further. Eugene tried to help him shore the place up, he really did, but he got in the way so much that Jack finally had him sit in the center of the room until he'd made the building as safe as he could.  
  
"Ja-Jack."  
  
"I'm right here."  
  
"P-Please donleamme."  
  
"I won't," Jack promised. He'd begun putting the clues together. Stuttering, slurred speech, clumsiness, repeated attempts to pull off his warm clothing. He held Eugene's hand again for a moment and then dug into their bags. Jack unrolled a sleeping bag with a flip and unzipped Eugene’s jacket, pushing it off his shoulder.  
  
"I th-thought you told me to st-stay--"  
  
"I know what I told you, but now I need you to get undressed. God, I hope the movies didn’t just make this up."  
  
"What m-movi-es?"  
  
"Just do what I said, please."  
  
Unsurprisingly, Jack managed to get his clothes off first. He should have been more than a little embarrassed, mortified really, at the fact that he was pulling Eugene’s shirt over his head without even waiting for his permission. It wasn’t as though he’d been traveling with Eugene all that long, and they hadn’t progressed too far past the awkward early stages of “I like you, do you like me,” but this was too important. He hurried a shivering, confused, protesting Eugene into the sleeping bag and slid in after him. It was a bit of a tight fit, two grown men in a bag meant for one, but they fit comfortably together, Eugene's head nestled beneath Jack's chin.  
  
"I-If you'd wanted t’ ge' me n-n-naked all youhadtodo was ask."  
  
Jack laughed, hand running slowly up and down Eugene’s back. "I do plan on getting you naked again, but not when you’re hypothermic."  
\---  
The second time Jack saved Eugene's life, they were on the run from a horde of zombies. Maybe not a horde. Maybe ten. As far as Jack knew, there was no officially recognized definition of what constituted a horde. Getting chased by hordes happened a lot more in the early days than they liked to remember. These were all shamblers, but that didn't really make it much better. There were too many of them. Every time they got far enough ahead to catch their breath, more zombies would come out of nowhere, and they'd be up and running again.  
  
They were too tired to speak, but they were running with one thought in mind. They'd heard of a few small settlements north and east of the major cities, places that might take a healthy person, give them someplace to stay. They didn't hold out much hope for anywhere they could call a home, but something that was safe, even for a night. That alone was almost more than they dared hope for. It was enough to keep them running.  
  
Eugene was sick, recovering from one of the innumerable illnesses that modern medicine could dispel with a blink and a wave. Back when there was modern medicine. Jack shook the thought aside, reaching out to take Eugene's hand, easing him to a stop.  
  
"I've got a plan."  
  
"That sounds bad," Eugene said, breath coming hard and fast. "Really, really bad."  
  
He hugged Eugene with one arm. "You need to keep running. I'll try to draw them off and meet up with you again."  
  
It sounded too much like a suicide mission and Jack knew it, but if he could just distract the zoms, give Eugene enough time to find somewhere safe... It would be worth everything, whatever he had to sacrifice.  
  
" _Where_?" Eugene asked. "Where will you find me again? It's not like we can just say, 'Hey, let's meet at the nearest Tesco's!'"  
  
"Keep your voice down! Eugene, please. I can outrun them. You can't. Not for much longer." That was the wrong thing to say. He could actually feel Eugene’s growing righteous outrage. He waylaid it as best he could with, "Don't argue with me. You know I'm right."  
  
"Then shouldn't I distract them? If you have a better chance of getting away--"  
  
"Start running. The towns--"  
  
"--if they exist--"  
  
"--should be due east of here. Just keep running for as long as you can. I'll find you."  
  
The zombies were getting closer, louder. They knew, in that terrifying instinctive way they seemed to have, that their prey had stopped running. There were just too many of them. Jack pressed W.G. into Eugene's hand and then pulled away, turning back toward the horde before Eugene could grab him.  
  
"Jack!"  
  
It took him two days and some rather creative weapons creation--a branch was not an easy weapon to wield, but it did its job--to find him again. Zombies weren't like animals to get agitated by one of their number getting killed, but even they turned their attention to the nearest prey. If he'd been thinking, he would have kept W.G., but he'd been a little wrapped up in the 'suicide' part of the 'suicide mission.'  
  
He killed ten of them—or maybe eleven; he wasn’t sure if that last one was dead, but it wasn’t getting back up—then headed east. For a day and two nights, there was nothing but the occasional zombie and, once, a deer. Shortly after dawn on the second day, he heard gunfire. Gunfire meant zombies, but it also meant humans.  
  
Following the noise, he found an old manor house, one of those ones made of stone, meant to endure the ages. He was willing to bet that the occupants that had taken it over didn’t have their names on the family tree, but they let him in.  
  
They checked him over for bites and then released him into the main square, where he heard someone shouting his name. Jack had expected their reunion to be a little less, well, violent. Eugene didn’t bother to even greet him, running full-tilt into him and punching him hard.  
  
"You're such a fucking asshole!"  
  
"Ow! Ow, ‘Gene, seriously,  _ow_!"  
  
"I hate you! You could have died! I thought you were dead!"  
  
Jack caught Eugene's hands before he could get hit again, pulling him in. He was vaguely aware of some of the people staring at them, but he was focused entirely on the man in front of him. "I'm okay."  
  
"You had damn well better be. Fucker."  
  
Eugene swooped in and kissed him hard, more teeth than lip, and it wasn’t quite what Jack had imagined their first kiss to be, but they were both alive.  
\---  
The third time Jack saved Eugene's life, they'd been on their own for nearly a month. After their last traveling companions, a father and his daughter, were killed, they decided to forego any others. It was great at first, until they wandered far enough that it was hard to find food. There were no cities or pantries to loot, the wildlife hadn't returned yet, that or the zombies were eating them, too. For some reason, Eugene didn't find that quite as funny as Jack did.  
  
Eugene didn't find very much funny anymore. To compensate, Jack tried to find even more things funny. He tried to find humor in the malnourished, dehydrated headaches they woke up with every morning. He tried to find it funny when their stomachs hurt so badly they could barely stand. That was getting harder. It was getting harder to get out of their beds in the morning, pack up their camps, and get on the road.  
  
Things were getting bad, dangerous to be around even other humans. If you were hungry, they probably were, too. The question was who was stronger at the moment. Who had eaten last. It had gotten to the point where sometimes he and Eugene had to take turns eating. Better to have one full, one strong, to protect the other. It was a crazy, fucked-up world where that was the way they divvied up food.  
  
Jack had eaten last, and even that was getting far enough back that he was  _hungry_. He couldn't imagine what Eugene was feeling, but he was still struggling along behind. Jack wasn't sure how much longer he'd last.  
  
"I have an idea."  
  
Eugene gave him a weary look, too exhausted to say anything, but Jack knew the expression. He ignored it, veering off to the right. Eugene followed as loyally as he always had and Jack hated himself. It had been his idea to go off on their own. He'd actually said it was easier to feed two people than four. He was such an idiot, but at least he knew this ground. They'd circled through here a time or six over the last few months. There was a barn with a hayloft accessible only by ladder, easy to pull up. Safe. Warm, even.  
  
The barn was still there and empty, but he had to help Eugene up the ladder. Eugene collapsed in the rotting hay once he reached the top, without even bothering to clear out a space. Jack did it for him, half-lifting him and dragging him a few paces to the side. He wrapped him in one blanket, then a second.  
  
"Where’re you going?"  
  
"I told you, I have an idea."  
  
"'Cause that always turns out so well for us."  
  
Jack held in a bitter, broken laugh. "I love you, 'Gene, okay? Hold on. I'll be back as soon as I can." Normally there would have been some sort of argument, but Eugene was silent. Jack stooped and kissed his forehead. "Remember to pull the ladder up when I'm gone."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
He waited long enough on the unsecured barn floor to make sure Eugene did that, and then he shouldered his pack and headed outside. There were a few settlements around, close enough that he should be able to make it to one and back before nightfall. Provided they had anything left to trade. Provided nothing stopped him on the way and relieved him of either his pack or his life. That would have been how things would go for him, wouldn't it? Eugene would starve to death, waiting for him to come back. He probably couldn't make it down that ladder by himself, and if he'd tried, he probably would have fallen off and broken his dumb Canadian neck.  
  
Eugene would have saved the zombies and the other humans the trouble and killed Jack himself if he'd known what he was planning. Jack might have let him, if he'd known that getting the food, a more-than-decent haul all said, was going to cost him his shoes. It was a long trip back, wary and half-certain the people he'd traded with were going to follow him to take the food back, as well as whatever else Jack had on him.  
  
But the ladder was down when he got back and suddenly he cared a lot less about what they might try to do. "Eugene!"  
  
Eugene's hand appeared over the edge. "Yeah?" His voice was weak, but clear.  
  
Jack climbed up the ladder as quickly as he could, tossing the bag as soon as he was high enough and pulled the ladder up behind him. He grabbed Eugene tight, awkwardly half-kneeling on a rotted bit of rope, pointedly ignoring the disgusting squishing sound it made. "I saw the ladder down and—"  
  
"I didn't know how long it would take you to get back," Eugene said, the longest sentence he'd managed to string together in days. "I didn't want you getting stranded down there, if something--"  
  
A valid point, but Jack didn't really want to hear it. It was not something he wanted to think about. "I brought something for you."  
  
His shoes, his winter jacket, and all the electronics equipment they'd gathered over the last month had gotten him enough food to last them several weeks, even had gotten a whole, already cooked and dried, deer haunch. It would be quite a conversation when Eugene was feeling better to explain why he was barefoot. Later.  
\---  
The fourth time Jack saved Eugene's life, everything had been going so well. They'd parted amicably with the two guys they'd been traveling with, the weather was good, and Jack was pretty much more in love than he'd ever been in his life. It was different for Eugene, though. He'd seemed happy with Brandon and Eric, but once they left, he'd gotten quieter again.  
  
They’d been walking all day before Jack spotted an old holiday cottage. It looked worn down, but silent. The windows on both floors had been boarded up. It looked like it could have potential as a decent place to hole up for the night. It wasn't quite time for them to really start looking for a night's camp, but his every attempt at conversation with Eugene had been met with single-syllable answers, and occasionally just grunts. He was getting frustrated.  
  
The place checked out. It was even fairly clean, disused and musky, but Jack couldn't see any signs of vermin or zombies. And, best of all, there was a bed. He spread the sleeping bag out over it and hopped on, letting out a laugh when he bounced. He sobered quickly and sat up when Eugene just sighed heavily.  
  
"They told us where they were going, if you want to find them again," Jack said, watching him for his response.  
  
Eugene had been spreading out their damp clothing to dry, lesson learned, but he stopped when Jack spoke, looking at him with a frown. "What?"  
  
"I mean, I know Brandon was straight, but Eric was pretty into you. I'm sure he wouldn't mind you showing up again."  
  
Eugene had started to say something, then he stopped, mouth open. "Are you breaking up with me?"  
  
"No! I... um, I mean, if that's what you want?"  
  
"Why would I want that?"  
  
Jack began to get the feeling that he had waded into something that would end up entirely over his head. "It's just--well, you've been weird since they left. I assumed..."  
  
That brought a faint smile to Eugene's face. He sat on the edge of the bed near Jack, reaching for his hand. "You thought that I'd fallen in love with him?"  
  
"I didn't know!" Jack said, suddenly embarrassed and defensive. "I just wanted you to be happy."  
  
The smile disappeared and Jack's world compressed once again. Eugene kicked off his shoes, pulled Jack's own shoes off, and settled himself on the bed. Jack held him maybe a little tighter than he needed to.  
  
"I'm tired," Eugene whispered against Jack's shoulder, staring past him. "I miss mountains. I miss... God, I miss lasagna--"  
  
"Lasagna?"  
  
"What, do you not have lasagna in England? I'm trying to have a moment here."  
  
"Right, sorry. Yes, we do have lasagna. Continue."  
  
"I miss Tim Horton's. I miss my family. I don't even know if they're still alive." Eugene took a deep breath. "I sometimes don't know if it's worth it."  
  
Jack almost asked what a Tim Horton's was, but he held his tongue. "'Gene."  
  
Eugene stayed where he was, looking across Jack's chest and out the window into the too-black darkness of an empty world. "Don't do that. Don't say my name like I've done something horrible."  
  
"What--what would you do?"  
  
"Nothing."  
  
That was enough of an answer to send a chill down Jack's spine, but he felt himself getting angry. "So you'd just stop? You'd give up? One more zombie out there?"  
  
"You don't get to be so damn righteous." Eugene tried to pull away, but Jack didn't let go of him. "You  _know_  what happened to your parents."  
  
Well, that hurt. "They're dead. You may remember Mum trying to kill me."  
  
"Mine could be alive. They could be alive and safe, and they probably think I'm dead in this country they didn't really want me to come to in the first place. I missed their thirtieth anniversary. The entire family was going to be up..."  
  
"So you'd let yourself die?"  
  
"I'm never going to see them again. I'm never going to see anyone I care about again. What does it matter?"  
  
Jack finally let go, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed and standing. He grabbed the second sleeping bag from where it lay on the floor. "It'd matter to me."  
  
He let the door slam and headed back down the stairs. He'd made it all the way down to the bedroom they'd rejected because it was on the ground floor before Eugene pelted into him from behind, wrapping his arms around him so tightly Jack let out an unattractive strangled sound.  
  
"I wasn't thinking, Jack, please." Eugene was breathing too heavily for the few steps down to reach him. "I didn’t mean… Please, come back to bed. I don't want to sleep alone. I don’t want you to sleep alone."  
\---  
The fifth time Jack saved Eugene's life, he was pretty sure it was all his fault in the first place. They'd bypassed the huge settlement a few hours ago, giving it an unnecessarily wide berth. He didn't trust places like that. Too many chances for a bite to sneak in. Eugene had wanted to stop, if not at that one, then at the other, smaller one. Maybe they would take them in for a night or two, long enough for them to regain some strength. There had to be something to build or repair. Some way they could earn a night's rest.  
  
Jack refused. It wasn't safe. Not until things settled down. They were better off on their own. They'd looked after themselves for nearly a year, through one of the most brutal winters England had had in a long time. It had been luck at first, but they were getting good at it now.  
  
He started to see signs of another settlement, trampled ground, soft noises in the distance that weren't zombie groans. There were even some zombie corpses, the real kind. The good kind. The kind that weren't getting up again. Jack liked those. Even the first place they saw didn't have that many corpses around.  
  
"We should head a little further north," Jack said.  
  
Eugene gave him an annoyed look, but didn't say anything, just hiking his bag further up his shoulder and turning northward.  
  
"You get it, don't you?" Jack asked, jogging a few steps to catch up with him. "You've heard what they say. Settlements that are pretty much mob rule? People starve inside there. As punishment, you get thrown to the zombs and they take bets to see who lives the longest?"  
  
"They can't all be like that," Eugene said, speeding up a little. He brushed past a tree that had something carved deeply in the trunk. Jack paused to look at it. An off-kilter triangle with a crooked line down the center. He didn't know what it meant, and when he turned to take a step, he heard a crash and the heart-stopping sound of Eugene's scream.  
  
"Eugene!"  
  
"Wait!" Eugene's voice called, broken with pain. "There's a... God, fuck, this hurts... Slow."<  
  
He restrained the urge to go pelting through the woods. Within a few steps, he came to the edge of washed-out ditch, a couple feet almost straight down. Eugene was laying there, a leg bent at the shin. For a full second, Jack thought he wasn't breathing, until he saw the sobs shaking his shoulders.  
  
"'Gene?"  
  
"W-Who the hell put a ravine in the middle of the English countryside?"  
  
"God, shut up," Jack whispered. "I need you to--you need to stay still, okay? I'll be down in just a second. I'll get there, just stay still, okay? You've got to try to stay quiet."  
  
"Trying," Eugene said. His voice was faint.  
  
"Not that quiet," Jack said, spotting what looked like a rough but used path down the side. He threw his bag and bat down near Eugene, then slipped and slid toward him, stumbling the last few paces. "Oh god. Oh god oh god oh god, 'Gene, I don't..."  
  
There was bone sticking out a hands-width below his knee. Blood was everywhere, way more than he could afford to lose for long. Jack shook his shoulder when Eugene didn't say anything, then harder when that didn't even draw a response from him.  
  
"Eugene!"  
  
"I'm being quiet," Eugene said, his mouth barely moving to form the words. "You told me to be quiet."  
  
"God, that's not... 'Gene, I don't know what to do."  
  
"It hurts, Jack." The words came out as a broken sob. “It hurts.”  
  
"I know it does. I know, love. I know it hurts. I don't..." He took a second to force his mind to focus. He knew this. Basic first-aid. The rest he could deal with later. Stop the bleeding. Get him somewhere safe. "It's gonna hurt worse in just a second. You need to stay quiet for this part. Quiet and conscious."  
  
Jack shrugged off his jacket and, with a brief prayer that Eugene lived long enough to hate him, scrambled back up the side and tore off a few arm-sized branches from the nearby trees. His hands stung and he left smears of blood along the bark.  
  
"'Gene, you still with me?"  
  
Eugene nodded, head lolling from side-to-side. "Go. You can't," he stopped to draw in a shuddering breath, "do anything for me. Go."  
  
"Fuck that," Jack said, reaching his side. He kissed Eugene's blood- and mud-encrusted hand. "It's not worth it without you. This is gonna hurt a lot, okay? And I don't know if this is gonna help, but I-I don't know what else to do. You gotta be quiet now. Hands over your mouth."  
  
He helped Eugene lift his hands and press them firmly over his mouth, then put one hand on Eugene's thigh. He shuddered and put the other below the break. Eugene was shaking.  
  
"I'm sorry," Jack whispered, then he pulled the lower half of the leg as straight as he could. Even Eugene's hands couldn't completely muffle the scream, body going rigid with pain. "Stay with me, 'Gene. Stay with me a little bit longer. We'll get you somewhere safe."  
  
He'd taken the basic first-aid classes, and splinting wasn't hard. Splinting your bleeding boyfriend with no painkillers in the middle of the zombie apocalypse was a hell of a lot harder. He managed to get it done, tying his jacket and a couple shirts around the splint, and another over the bloody wound.  
  
"'Gene? You still with me?"  
  
Eugene lifted a few fingers in his direction, eyes closed, broken sobs wracking his body. "Leave me, leave me, leave me."  
  
"Don't be stupid!" Jack hissed.  
  
He heard a number of sounds at the same time. A strange, really annoying beeping noise. Groaning zombies, drawn doubtless from the very first crash. Pounding feet and a human voice.  
  
"Three, five, and six, draw them off. Two, fourteen, eighteen, guard our backs. Eight, fifteen, you're with me."  
  
Jack could only stare as people appeared over the edge, following the same path he’d taken down with more careful steps. One took off down the gully. Another stationed himself at the top, while the rest spread out around them.  
  
"My name's Evan," the man said, and Jack recognized the voice as the man who had been talking earlier. “Either of you bitten?”  
  
Jack shook his head.  
  
"Then the Major gave us the okay to rescue you, that all right with you?"  
  
"Um."  
  
"We need to be quick about this," Evan said. Even as he was talking, the other two people with him were gathering some of the supplies Jack had thrown aside. "Eighteen, can you carry him?"  
  
"Yeah, I got him."  
  
"Careful with the leg," the woman said, nodding toward Eugene. "I don't know what the Doc can do about it, but if you mess it up any more than it already is, she might kill you herself." She passed one of the packs to Evan and then handed W.G. back to Jack. He accepted it, somewhat bewildered. He hadn’t heard anything about survivors rescuing people, and definitely not anyone as disciplined as these guys.  
  
Eighteen, and Jack didn't have time to wonder what the hell kind of name that was, lifted Eugene from the ground. There was a moment where Jack almost hoped he'd lost consciousness, and then another tortured scream tore from Eugene's throat.  
  
"This is gonna be a rough run, mate. Just hold on and keep as quiet as you can," Eighteen said. Eugene made a sort of whimpering sound that Eighteen must have taken for agreement.  
  
"Ready to run?" Evan asked. He lifted a hand to his ear. "We clear, Sam? Good. Okay, we're moving out!"  
  
It was less of a run and more of a hell-bent sprint. Jack had no idea where they were going, but Eighteen was carrying Eugene and Jack was not about to be left behind. The woman kept pace with Jack, encouraging him whenever his steps faltered.  
  
"We're almost there, love. Keep going. Abel's just up ahead. Can you see the red light? Keep running. We'll get your friend fixed up, good as new."  
  
Then a man's warm voice over a loudspeaker. "Raise the gates. Welcome back, runners, and hello newbies. The doc's waiting for you in the hospital."  
\---  
The sixth time, Jack didn't save Eugene's life. It was a shitshow. It was a royally fucked-up shitshow. Everything was so goddamned wrong that he didn't even know what was happening. People were screaming and runners were doing their best to direct people to safe zones, but most of them were half-terrified and even Sam, who, despite what he claimed, worked pretty well under pressure, sounded frantic over the loudspeaker.  
  
"Runners eight, three, and thirteen, report to the gates. Runners five, seven, and one, escort duty. What? Runner thirteen is down? Runner five, report to the gates. Runner six, report to the major for escort duty. The major is waiting for you at--oh god. Oh my god, all runners to the gates! Immediate decoy mission!"  
  
He'd thought the runners hadn't been much help, but it got so much worse when they left, bolting for the noisemakers and gates. Even Sam's occasional reminders of "Everyone report immediately to Janine's farmhouse. Evac from there" didn't help. Too many people were too scared. Some people were bolting for the gates, some were trying to find missing loved ones or children. Jack was one of those, running blindly toward the last place he knew Eugene had been. He barely made it half way before Maxine intercepted him, grabbing his arm and dragging him away, toward the farmhouse.  
  
"It's already burning, Jack, it's too late."  
  
"He can't--Maxine, please! I told him I wouldn't leave him, I have to find him!" He was stronger than her, if he could just get her grip loosened enough, he could get away. He could get to Eugene and, if nothing else, die trying to buy him enough time to get safe.  
  
"Sam, help me with him!"  
  
Sam, had finally abandoned the comms shack now that it was apparent he could do no more, took Jack's other arm and between the two of them they dragged him to the farmhouse. There were actual helicopters there, four of them, with a couple others already in the air. The two of them shoved Jack up and into it. Soldiers strapped him in, Sam and Maxine on either side. Sam was holding onto his arm, keeping him in place, but he was looking out into the turmoil, the flashes of color amongst the trees that could only be humans, his runners. Maxine was holding his hand. She looked shocked. Jack just felt numb.  
  
He wasn't any help when they landed at the military base, accepting a brusque stripping and examination and sitting mostly silent through the questioning. Debriefing, they called it. He didn't even flinch at the few gunshots he heard, but he did flinch when he saw Sam embracing Runner Five, obviously overjoyed at her safe return. Maxine stayed by his side the whole time, asking everyone for him if they'd seen Eugene. She even managed to coerce a few of the soldiers that had rescued them to spread the word.  
  
They had to earn their keep, and Jack did his part, but only barely. He did what he had to do, assigned to distribution by some soldier who thought he was doing him a favor by letting him see the most people possible. It just hurt. The few remaining Abel Township refugees had clustered together, but Eugene was not among them.  
  
The rescue missions were worthless, and a waste of fuel, but the major had somehow convinced them to keep looking for a few more days, for anyone who had holed up somewhere. They choppered runners in--the fits Sam threw were almost enough to make Jack laugh again--dropped them around the countryside to see if there were any signs of survivors. They found a couple. Runner Seven showed up again, and if Runner Five cried, nobody ever said anything about it. They rounded up Ed, who Jack was beginning to think was unkillable, and reunited him with his daughter, who had escaped with toy rabbit intact.  
  
The days passed and the group of people waiting for their friends and family grew smaller each day. Some people were lucky, some gave up hope. Jack had given up hope the day the helicopter had taken off without Eugene. He still went, even if he didn't join crowd, calling out names before anyone could disembark. Mostly he didn't even look, sitting and staring at the regulation concrete ground.  
  
At first Maxine or Sam went with him, but gradually even they stopped. He wasn't sure if it was to give him his peace or because they couldn't bear the sight of so much anguish from so many of their friends. The helicopters were loud enough that they were spared the sound of sobs when they left alone, or the sobbing laughter when somebody stepped off, which was so much the better for Jack. He didn't think he could handle hearing the happy ones.  
  
"It's not quite Tesco's, but I guess that's okay."  
  
Jack's head jerked up so fast his neck cracked. There, standing right in front of him and looking only a little worse for the wear, was Eugene. He had a crooked smile on his face and there was mud in his hair. His crutches were dirty and one was even a little bent.  
  
He opened his mouth to say any one of a million things, but instead he launched himself to his feet and wrapped his arms around Eugene. Eugene dropped the crutches and returned the hug, trusting in Jack to keep them both upright.  
  
"How?" Jack rasped, peppering kisses on Eugene's lips and jaw and cheeks and forehead and neck and everywhere he could reach.  
  
Eugene was laughing, combing his hand through Jack's hair, holding his shirt so hard his nails were digging into Jack's back. "Sara. Stop kissing me for a second, I need to see you."  
  
Reluctantly, Jack pulled a little away, hands still on Eugene's sides, helping keep him balanced. "I thought you were dead."  
  
"You look like a nightmare," Eugene said, matter of fact. "Haven't you been taking care of yourself at all?"  
  
"You don't smell all that great yourself," Jack said, instead of answering.  
  
"They told me you can usually get at least one warm shower a week around here. What do you say you help me get cleaned up?"  
  
Jack was more than willing to help with that. He stooped and returned the crutches to Eugene’s hands, then immediately took them back, leaning them against the barrel he’d just been sitting on.  
  
“Jack, what are you--” He lifted Eugene in his arms, noting how light he was, and then picked up the crutches himself. “Put me down!”  
  
“Nope.”


End file.
